Prix Jardin d'Europe 2016

The Casinos Austria Prix Jardin d'Europe 2016 was once again awarded in the frame of the [8:tension] Young Choreographers' Series of ImPulsTanz – Vienna International Dance Festival.

The following productions were in the competition for the renowned European prize for contemporary choreography, awarded with € 10.000.- and an artistic residency:
"(b)reaching stillness" by Lea Moro (DE/CH)
"Sixteen Candles (2015)" by Bryana Fritz (BE/US), Christoffer Forbes Schieche (BE/SE)
"Treasured in the Dark" by Thiago Granato (DE/BR) – LLB Co-production
"OPERATION ORPHEUS" by Jule Flierl (DE)
"Soil Girl" by Berstad / Helgebostad / Widgel (NO)
"Hmm" by Sonja Jokiniemi (FI)
"The Planet-Eaters: Seconds" by Will Rawls (US)
"Cosmos The Beach" by Linda Blomqvist (BE/SE)
"A Matter of Belief" by Alexander Gottfarb (AT/SE)
"Vox" by Aline Landreau (DE/FR)
"A kind of fierce" by Katerina Andreou (FR/GR)
"M.E.L.T. – Motion, Emotion and Lateral Thinking" by Valentina de Piante Niculae (RO/IT) – LLB Co-production
"Future Read in Concrete and Stone" by Bojan Djordjev (RS) – LLB Co-production

The jury 2016, consisting of Jennifer Lacey (FR), Ana Vujanović (RS) and Wolfgang Kralicek (AT) viewed all nominated productions and awarded the winner(s) during the Casinos Austria Prix Jardin d'Europe Award Ceremony on August 14, 20:00 at the Viennese theatre Kasino am Schwarzenbergplatz. The event was moderated by Dirk Stermann and Clara Furey.

The jury chose two artists to be equally awarded with the prize of 10,000 Euro and an artistic residency at ImPulsTanz 2017: 

Moreover, the winners have been honoured with a prize sculpture by the New York based Austrian artist Markus Schinwald.

The distinguished jury stated the reasons for their decision not to award only a single performance as follows:

We split the prize not because we COULD not decide but because we did not WANT to decide. We wanted to award two performances that present two different positions of today's choreography and could speak to each other; agree, disagree, or provoke a debate that can hopefully bring us further in thinking choreography and dance. Apart from finding the dialogue between them interesting, we award these works because they show a delicate choreographic thinking about indelicate social issues, such as colonization, occupation, intercultural relations, social authority, free will and resistance. These topics are certainly not new, but we tend to see the reserved, sensitive and caring ways of dealing with them as newly necessary.

Beyond the jury award, the public and the fan community had the chance to reward the most interesting, mean, humorous, charming or even morose promotion clips that [8:tension] artists created specially for this purpose with the radio FM4 Fan Award. The online voting took place between 4th July and 13th August on the ImPulsTanz website.

The artist that received the most votes and thus the FM4 Fan Award 2016 is the Berlin and Zurich based Swiss choreographer and dancer LEA MORO.

She was honoured with a suitcase – in line with the international genre – and a goody bag by the FM4 editorial staff.